Thursday, April 24, 2014

Spirits

"In the weeks after we put our dog Bosie to sleep, sometimes I would hear the clinking of his dog collar against his water bowl in the kitchen late at night," one of my colleagues said.

Another friend told me this: "The autumn after Penelope passed away, she appeared to me as I was walking down our street. She was crossing the road, and she stopped when she saw me. After looking at me for a while, she ran off behind one of the houses. I knew then she was ok."

Some beloved pets even reincarnate back into their former homes. "I knew he would come back," our pet sitter told me two months after her dog died. "That's why we acted so fast to get the new puppy. We knew it was him and we wanted to bring him back home. It would not do to have him away from us too long, he would feel strange and lonely without us in his new life."

I agreed so I nodded. But I added: "Here we are, talking about our pets coming back like it was a completely normal, every day thing. If any one who have never had a pet overheard us, they'd think we were completely crazy."

"Yes, I suppose," said my pet sitter, sighing. "They wouldn't understand how it is, because they don't know how we love our babies."

Maybe the dead won't appear on demand. Strangely, I don't always feel their presence in music that they loved to dance to when they were alive. For example, after Alberto passed away, I haven't found Alberto in a tanda of Pugliese, or D'Arienzo vals. I find him in Tanturi tangos, with Enrique Campos singing, and I will cry. Mr. B, who didn't ever dance tango, sometimes appears in tandas of Di Sarli. I cry to those too. The lighting is dim in a lot of the milongas and people can't see red eyes or tear-streaked faces.

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Even though we were still in the clutches of winter, the sun shone the whole day, the day that Mr. B died. It had been one of the most painful days in my life, but when I saw the sun slowly disappear beneath the horizon, I didn't want the day to end. I didn't want time to move on, to move me further and further away from Mr. B.

I've been dancing Tango really well. Better than I ever had before. Man Yung says that it would be hard for me to "go back". I say to Man Yung, "I don't want to dance like this. I wish I could dance like I used to. It costs too much to dance like this."

They say that to dance Tango well you have to be completely present. How's this for a Tango moment? The past is dead. The future is worthless. There's only the present - and it is anguish.

Man Yung says, "You can't separate Tango from life. You are born, you grow old, and you die - that's life. This is inevitable. If life wasn't this way, it would no longer be precious. You have to thank Mr. B for the love he has given us, and the wonderful time we had together."

It's 11 p.m. We play with our cats every night now, and afterwards, they all get a snack. They get more fun, more treats, more cuddles. We are spoiling them shamelessly.

Amitabha Buddha

Man Yung continues to chant for Mr. B. The Amitabha Buddha assists in extinguishing bad karma and helping the dead transcend and get reincarnated into the next life.